i'm trembling, but not from the cold
by aurea-sidera
Summary: The world is burning, he tells her the first time they see each other in the After. She finds him somewhere in Eastern Europe and he's holed up in a hotel room with plans and blueprints all over the table. This is the beginning./or, after Infinity War, Natasha finds Clint. He's not someone she recognizes.


_The world is burning, _he tells her the first time they see each other in the _After_. She finds him somewhere in Eastern Europe and he's holed up in a hotel room with plans and blueprints all over the table. This is the beginning. When each kill is cold. It's calculated. There is no randomness. There is no anger.

This is denial, she knows. He thinks it's his fault. He thinks that if he was there it would have mattered.

She can tell him that Thanos would have pulled him apart like wool. That's what he did to her. That's what he did to all of them.

He shrugs. He's immovable. He doesn't want to argue, and neither does she, so they both let it go, on opposite sides of an argument that doesn't matter. _What's done is done. _

"Every time I close my eyes," he says, "I see it. I see _them._" His voice doesn't shake. There's no emotion in it. The emotion is being held back, away, just out of sight and touch and reach.

"I know." She doesn't see anyone, anything. Natasha was too busy digging herself out of the hole Thanos had buried her in to see that people were turning to dust. She just wiped the sweat off her forehead and thought, _I could have sworn there were more people here, _and then it all fell into place.

She sighs.

"You don't need to do this, Clint."

"I want to."

"No. You don't."

"What I want…" he says, then trails off. He points his gaze at the ceiling and Natasha can see him, struggling not to cry. "I can't have."

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

It's a dismissal. He knows. He's aware. He doesn't care.

Her heart is freezing.

"The world is burning," she repeats. "And if you keep doing this, it'll burn you, too."

He looks at her, and there's nothing in his eyes that she recognizes. She's seen him afraid. She's seen him angry. She's seen him grieving.

This is none of these.

"Good," he says, and he turns and leaves her at the window, alone.

She swallows.

He returns a few hours later, and she's still there. Still standing at the window, waiting for something that's never going to appear.

She doesn't even know what it is that she's waiting for.

She's in the same position as she was when he left, but the room is different. She's cleaned it up, restocked the coffee machine, and there's a box of nutrition bars on the dresser.

The door opens and Clint stops in his tracks when he sees her. Neither of them acknowledge the other, not until Clint sits down, cleans his sword, and puts it away.

"You're still here."

"Yeah." She turns then, arms still crossed over her chest, and for a second there, the flecks of blood on his suit look like fire.

He makes a noise, somewhere between exasperation and confusion. "Go back to New York."

"Not without you. Not while you're doing this. What was the death count for today, Barton? Three? Six? Eight?"

His head snaps up sharply and she knows that it's more than that. "They deserved it."

"Don't we all." She's unsympathetic.

"Do I need to tell you who didn't deserve it?" he hisses. "Huh?"

"Clint…"

"Nate. Remember him? He asked for ketchup on his fucking hot dog, Nat. That was the last thing I heard from him. My son."

That stings, a lot more than she'd care to admit.

"Lila. My girl. She could shoot, you know. Better than I expected. She didn't tell you because she wanted it to be a surprise for _you _next time you visited." He scoffs. "Oops."

Natasha swallows. Something rises in her throat and she shoves it down, pushes it down. She can't cry, not in front of him, not anymore. She can't.

"Cooper. My boy. He's—" and his voice breaks, _shatters, _like a bullet through glass. "He was _sixteen years old. _He was going to ask this one girl out, you know. He was so _hopeful._" Clint's crying now, but it's angry, it's overwhelming. "Did he deserve it?

"And _Laura._ She was _good. _She was the _best _person I knew, by far. She was… she was good, and she made everybody better. And she's _gone! _They're all _gone!_"

He buries his head in his hands and he cries, he sobs, for the first time since it happened.

She stands there, at the window, facing the room. Facing him, no more than eight feet away from her, crying, angrily, emotionally, pathetically.  
She doesn't move.

Eventually, he finishes, scrubs a hand over his face, looks back at her.

"Do you think she'd be proud of you?"

His lower lip trembles and she thinks he's going to cry again. But he doesn't. "It doesn't matter," he says stonily, angrily, his voice hard. "She's dead."

He grabs his coat, draped over the bed. "You won't be here when I come back," he orders.

"Clint…"

"Here are the options. One, you leave _right now, _and you don't see me again. Ever. You go back to New York and do your thing, and I stay here and do mine. Two, we fight, and you kill me and do the world a favour." He puts his arms through the coat, buttons it up. "Your choice."

"Clint…"

"_Your choice_."

He's immovable, and she's tired. For the first time in years, she looks into his eyes and doesn't understand him. There's something different about him. The Clint Barton that she knew is gone now.

He doesn't wait for her to say anything. He just leaves, opens the door and closes it again. He's made his point.

She doesn't know how long she stands there, at the window, looking at the door, hoping for something, anything. She doesn't know how long it is before she sighs and starts towards the door, tossing something onto the bed as she goes.

This won't be forever, she thinks. He'll come around.

When he returns, he sees her gone and brushes his finger over the cell phone that she left for him. It fits in his palm and he hefts it, feels its weight. Feels just how easy it would be to take it with him, to take her with him.

He hurls it out the window.

Clint Barton is gone now.


End file.
